Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.

Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,

its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;

up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all...
he took the fullness that love began.

Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.

Somebody who should have been born
is gone.

Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward...this baby that I bleed.

I never cared much for car talk,
But when he speaks, I'm intrigued,
And I don't know why.

Most men speak in tones that imply
I don't know anything,
Can't understand simple machines,
Have never seen an engine block,
And just want to watch as they talk.
But he is genuinely fascinated
With systems and forces,
And wants to share.
His passion consumes me,
And I listen, hoping to learn.

On switchbacking forest roads,
Over potholed washboard,
By steep cliff dropoffs,
My head swims with emergency "what ifs"
But not with him.
He flies over loose gravel
And I squeal with euphoric trust and delight.
He drives twice the posted speed,
And I find myself shamelessly sunk
Into a wet seat.
He pumps the brakes
And I'm bowing to the king,
Brazenly hoping that someday
He'll flip a carnal handbrake turn,
Wondering if he cares enough to show off,
Seduced like so many before me
By oil, rubber, and gasoline.

A Tribute

A king takes supper on a creaking deathbed. Featureless, winged creatures zoom by the dark condensed windows. Micro parasites build adobe headquarters in his soft tissue. Reaching for a plate,    he groans the terabyting howl that’s prescribed with chemotherapy. Qwerty and light from the drugs, he stares at the apple on his tray. Lost in its curves, he finds himself trapped in a safari of memories. A dream devolves upon his downtrodden mind….

The canopy is populated with twittering, angry birds. Pools of social blood attract flies to the googolplex degree. He stumbles through the dell, suspicious forest while a tremulous, fiery fox stalks behind his echoing footfalls. Pixar apes swing from trees chased by grisly, disney men with guns and trucks. A large eye tunes the darkness and blinks red upon an aging mountain lion in shadow’s brush.



The sony rays belight foliage in auspicious, plaid-orange hues. This amazon of experience plugs the wanderer into a hard drive of intelligence – a gateway to an encyclopedia of wikis and browsers, expanse enough for any backdrop rooftop audience to be faux-enthralled and eager. There are grumblings in the distance of another engine tromping the scope in search of something new and useless. A rumorous bat upsets the plagiarizing tide of the Atlantic Pea Sea. A snake slinks out of the blossoms clinging to the vines among a macintosh tree and bites the salty flier of the washboard night; cyber venom invades his veins.

The average, homeless, bounding, warrior awakens to find a cold supper on his lap and another syringe in his arm. His remaining gums support his teeth as they bite into the apple. He swallows, sighs, and rests his balding, crescent, once-handsome head on the white pillow.  The green fruit tumbles gently out of bed and mutely rolls to the floor.
With that, Steve Jobs is dead.

Take my saxophone
Take my piano
Take my guitar
Take my mandolin
Take my washboard
Take my harmonica
Take my sunglasses
Take my hairbrush
Take my Bible
Take my clothes
Take my trophies
Take my baton
Take my ballet shoes
Take my cane
Take my sword
Take my monkey
Take my collections
Take my cat
Take my house
Take my memories
Take my plans
My, that was a heavy load.
I feel so light.

Something aside of the things that have come
falls on your head and you're suddenly numb

Waiting for nothing, there's nothing in sight
no one can tell you to pick up the fight

So many voices are carrying words
even my own become lost, go unheard

It's taken me longer perhaps than it should
to let understanding wash over the good  

I need the water as much as you do
I'll take a sip and the rest is for you

They will tell you that you cannot feel fat.
Fat is not something you can feel, it’s just something that you are.
Well, I have to disagree.
I feel fat all the time.
I can feel it on my arms, my thunder thighs, and my bulge of my stomach.
Oh, do I feel it on my stomach.
And maybe they will tell you that touching your fat doesn't count.
Well maybe, I Feel Absolutely Terrible.
Feel, F
Absolutely, A
Terrible, T
Well, I may be big, but I’m not stupid.
That spells fat.
So, it must be true.
I’m fat, at least that’s what I've been told.

That’s what people everywhere have been told.
We grow up looking at photo-shopped pictures of models,
because thin is in!
So we gorge ourselves on “skinny pills” that market anorexia in a bottle.
We tell ourselves that in order to be beautiful or handsome, or desirable, there has to be an inch between our thighs.
We tell boys to have broad shoulders and a washboard for a stomach.
We tell girls that they have to look like a dog toy when it’s been squeezed,
but instead of eyes popping out, its your chest and your ****.
We have created impossible standards of what beauty is,
and so we **** ourselves in an attempt to reach them.

We feel hurt by the world,
so we cut each other down with stares that could shatter glass.
Some may think that they have risen above enough to educate,
so they offer you the friendly reminder that
skinny jeans don’t make you look skinny if you’re fat,
as if we were not intelligent enough to figure that out for ourselves.
They will remind you that a moment on the lips is forever on the hips,
so we binge in the darkness,
to hide because we now feel ashamed of a basic human need.
We will cry tears that are dry,
so they will never have to know,
that being told you have a ***-belly when you’re seven,
hurts just as much as being called a fat, little girl when you’re seventeen.

We turn away from the things that used to matter to us.
We look at clothes before smiles.
We take in size, before heart.
We call ourselves ugly without any regard for our person.
We know that the outside matches the inside,
but don’t give a second thought to the kind of person we really are.
So we look in the mirror and take a guess.
That answer seems good enough.

But I am sick of good enough.
I want to shatter the glass,
let it rain down in a fine powder
of the person that we thought we saw.
I want to stop looking down at the body beneath me,
and look up at the world that surrounds me.
But, so much of the world is small, and cruel.
So, I hang my head as I walk past.

I sit next to my best friend,
her perfect size zero
is huge in the eyes of the girls who crave it.
She tells me that she feels fat,
that she thinks she is ugly.
I am struck by this;
she has more beauty than she could ever know.
But I guess I don’t pay attention to what she looks like all that much.
I tell her,
“You’re not fat. If you’re fat than I have a gravitational orbit.”
I try to laugh, but she disagrees with me.
I guess she doesn't really pay attention to what I look like either.

It's like sparring with a lumberjack
a tell tale sign you're lost
A party trick , a baseball bat
and loving what you've got
a sparrow rests- an open chest
a gunshot wound for hire
tempted to forget that love
will force you through the fire
thirty nine and feeling fine
and hating what you have
kisses in the moonlight
and ignoring how it stabs
open eyes of baby blue
have been lying all this time
dreaming dreams sustained by you
it still feels like a crime.
Headlights hollow open vast
and scream a shallow tune
baby birds they fly too fast
and are taken by the moon.
Pacing blankets made of smiles
and fairies in her hair
name tags and red ceiling tiles
dying, trying not to stare.
She's beautiful as sunshine
and sweet as summer heat
and standing by the roadside
she sells her rotten meat.
There's plenty love in all the world
for sirens of her kind
and your body's steady pull of heat
tempts her to leave us all behind
we're hanging from a telephone pole
at the end of steady stream
and seeing glass is on the floor
cutting up our dreams
This plane is falling into bits
for the rich ones to enjoy
i wonder when they'll figure out
that earth is not a toy.
porky's in the dining hall
playing Rhapsody and Blue
on a washboard and a bathroom stall
I'm entering on cue.
You can scream and yell and call me names
Curse words aren't that bad
My life is one big mess of loud
you're not supposed to make me mad.

I have to run faster now,
I have to leave this town,
Change my name,
Change my face,
**** my identity and leave no trace,
The monster you made is creeping in the dark,
Yearning for the taste of a beating heart,
The bitter scent of soiled blood,
Alcohol and cigarettes,
Another fish caught in the net.

This kid is far from a ***** hot mess,
When he's unable to hide the stress,
To hold down tears that smell like Jack,
Barely able to keep himself back,
From the edge of his so called sanity,
Fractured by the pressure of male vanity.

This MANnequin is just a boy,
18 years and feels destroyed,
Metal pecs and washboard abs,
A dream of his while he covers the 'flab',
Betrayed by friends who style their hair
While he keeps on running so they don't stare
At the failure of physical attraction,
Repulsed by the existence of his own reflection,
Another flaw on a social scale,
**A grizzly end to this unwanted tale.

tumbling around, just outside of society’s idea of normalcy, he walks for miles on end.
with a golden notion, he dreams of love, life and truth.
he lives these dreams and always has.
he creates love around him, by devoting himself to truth in life.

woken by a stampede of angry cattle, he laughs.
his vow to never injustice these animals is so very solid and they don’t even know it.
with a washboard on his back, he’ll scream for wonder as he wanders, and it will ring out with purity and beauty.
i will hear it and so will the people that truly love him.

adventure is on his soles and he will track it all across the nation.
a bold child of the rebirth.
he is simple, he is free.
he is ***** gold.

I'm fatally dancing advancing with and toward

a slow zoom through hallways to the dark room

trying to shorten my strides or grip the walls at my sides gouging

a fingernail fear of mortality that makes out the shape

of the cursive-signed names of everyone or thing ever in a

not-so clever attempt to accept the thief that's in and is the night

I breathe heavily and wide to prove that I'm alive until my ribs

touch the white-walls rubbing along in a washboard song

that peels paint like turpentine with a rank smell wafting

from the room at the end of the line and time knuckling under

the backs of my knees scraping off of the floorboards slouching across

the adjacent door frames where exit signs should read thee

forehead pulsating expelling sweat to absolve me and for moments

the room might shine and I am still

tin cup flowers
and cars slurring by
a broken man touch the earth,
sad bandana wrapt around his hand,
God gives him road.
the dirt believes in what his hand reminds
i feel the moon,
and taste the sky.
you're wind in the washboard,
swallows dipped in silver and *** sweep in and out of-
sparrows sparkling and-
kicking stones to the side.
******* pockets.
i fell off the whole universe   just for a moment.

no apologies

(Memories of a Far Away Land)

I miss the mornings when I could listen to the roosters that loudly crowed.
Open the window to the scent of fresh tortillas, from the abarrotes it flowed.

Everyday I would wake engulfed by mountains and their fresh fresh air.
Alonzo's voice carrying loudly, "Empanadas, Empanadas, get them here."

Daily cruises through the streets of Juarez Mexico I often will reminisce,
Ending up in Downtown Centro to buy whatever, it was anyone's guess.

I miss going to the little grocers to buy, mandarins, avocado and mango,
The long waits in line on the Bridges of America trying to cross to El Paso.

Bathing in metal tubs, washing clothes by washboard with your bare hands,
I'll forever keep the precious memories safely in my heart, of a far away land.


                                         Lopez ©reationz 2014

snow ribbons the night behind blinds, white
crackle over vinyl, black in ravines
undulating silt whisks the sea, bed
conversation of springs, yawn
to sleep on a twin mattress, turtle,
interred: orange branch to grove floor, hear-witness
flutes in unbearable dawn unposessable, flesh
and lavender stir in sleepy eye beds, rosebuds and breath
condense warm on rickety panes, chipped
beams stray suspended through poplar clouds, dissolve
avocado in manila teem, damp hush to skin folds, pores,
unseen burrows, pawed and pinhead heartbeats, meek
but if in unison: rainfall tremendous on canvas cover, sinuous
as the shanty cat spine, lilting: raking grain to wispy tail, cursive
trickle over creekbed washboard scrubs, whisper
sudding lace over iris-leather bed, wheat
murmurs iridescent in squint-eyed flaxen wind.

Long car trips
Crowded with junk
And cramping legs
Flashing light streaming through the window
Into the muggy car air,
A trapped fly banging on the glass,
Low rumbling like gravel thunder
And bursts of shaking
Rattling teeth and seatbelts
When you roll over stones
Wisps of vented air
Curling around your naked toes,
And sweaty, rumpled clothes.
Skin sticking to fake leather seats
The slight sifting sick in your belly
Sitting fat like a toad,
And hoping the stuff in the back
Isn't shaking or breaking apart
From the crunching washboard gravel,
And drowsy eyes, tired from endless trees
Slowly drift until you arrive in the dark

to the deer i mortally wounded at five o clock on saturday morning in maupin oregon,

A horrifying sound tore sleep out of me that clear fall morning.
it rang and rang and rang and rang and rang like the 5 o clock church bell
in little empty nowhere town central oregon territory.
the sounds of impending death came from somewhere,
maybe they crawled from deep inside my psychotic insomniatic delusions;

foreshadowing the coming  tragedy
about five miles down the road about five minutes in the future.

my plaquey teeth dug into stale French loaf and stinking
tongue dug old butter from plastic cartridge.
while
your teeth tugged at tender grass tendrils beside mystic river warm
tongue lapped up river’s crystal clean waters

i longed to somehow cleanse myself of imaginative terror echoing sound around
as i wound through sleepy town,
'no life moves this early,' i presupposed
my thoughts found shelter amid a current obsession of mythic redside trout
swiftly rising from riverbottom at my orange stimlator siz 8 elkhair fly,
and the battle that may quite possibly follow.
if i only attain this once in a lifetime
i will be content i promise.

car continues down hill
i witness silverpink powerhungry **** of river flowing
omnipotent sherars falls roaring below me.

slit eyes fixated themselves on picturesque sunrise
as temporary monument jumpstarting new life from those cold old bold nights

too-nice car took potholes and washboard trail efficiently,
it sped bumping onward upstream bleary eyed coffeelessness.
heavy eyes, when not periodically closed, focused on roaring river
to my right and pink sunrise to my up, canyon walls lit up pink limestone
awakened each new day discovered.

rude too-nice car kicked up pesky dust.
i was mid-apologizing to any creature it bothered this early in the morning when
my left eye captured

you (adult black tail doe, perfect purity)

rocketrun from the left bank spooked by
unnatural sounds
caused by
machinery technology engine tires internal combustion radiator hammering cylinders
my hands twitch left on wheel attempting to swerveavoid

you(adult black tail doe, perfect purity)

attempt to dash uproad away escape
diamond hoofs dig but not enough
car slams into your right front shoulder
buckles, cracking
your depthless black eyes
glisten with surprise
pain, doom
courses through your sinewy perfect muscular
body
i gasp and drive off fifty feet low speed

my rearview mirror reveals that you will not walk this one off.
instead you suffer deeply, immensely,
jumping wildly, falling into dust, getting up, flailing, falling
striking pink sunrise behind you silhouettes your broken movement so very clearly.

car inches onward i honestly know not the correct ethic
“never approach a wounded animal” and
“you ******* coward put it out of its misery its not dead it is suffering you half killed it it didn’t deserve it you half killed it you ******* you should die in its place
you killed mother nature herself”

i had no gun, only a hunting knife, fishing gear, old french bread
if i had a gun i don’t know if i could have shot you dead
my shaking hands and teared eyes would fare me poorly

i drove off slowly, leaving you to die there in ****** pink sunrise
alone, suffering
crying out this terrible cry,
stealing it from my previous nights dreams
my too-nice car inches around corner until you are visually out of sight
i am not crying externally but internally i am a tempest of emotion,
i smash black dashboard with fists screaming at myself static noise i can hear nothing time stops
“i killed it i killed her why didnt i see her”
i try to convince myself it all didn’t happen
and failed
i try to convince myself you live
and failed

the guilt i bear is immense
you were undeserving
you are eternally etched now
you are a deserved scar
we are forever connected

i now cradle your still warm carcass within eternal arms of my subconcous
my metafingers lightly touch your left broken shoulder bones
death stole you like it steals all, untimely, undeserving, brutal.

"We had all these crazy ******' dreams together, Me and Her. We ate our weight in marshmallow ***** pancakes underneath the stars and kissed each other with tongues of fire licking roofs of open mouth. Her mouth was like a ******' inferno, like in the sense that it seems so small and insignificant until you actually get there and then it just swallows you whole, gets you hotter than you've ever been in your ******' life and you're there for eternity. It's endless. If you weren't thinking about it before, now you're thinking about it.

You're thinkin' about her, and thank the ******' heavens for that. If I could get every man on the face of this planet to think about her the way I do, at the length that I do, til we all ******' keel over, it just wouldn't do it. She's somebody that gets stuck in your hair when you're not looking and somebody you trip over in the mornings when you just ******' cleaned the place up. She clings to the bottom of your shoes til you can hear her name in any number of footsteps on any number of paths."

_________________­_

Baby, let me sit in the driver's seat.
Let me drift smoothly, subtly into your lane.
Remember how you always said I was too **** skinny?
Guess what, baby?
When the tail lights call to me I can slide right in between them, like a fitted sheet or rungs on a washboard. I darted between the raindrops like you always said I would but I got wet anyways. What do you know about that?

I don't know much about it, myself.

The doctor said I can't drive anymore. I told that *******, "my eyesight's 20/20! I seen every single puzzle piece on those office inkblots for the knives and daggers that they are! The **** I look like?"

I'm exhausted, Baby. I'm leaking black smoke out of my lungs. I don't brush my teeth anymore because the fluoride ***** up my third eye. How do ya feel about that? Meditate on it. Meditate on me. Meditate on the stars, on the heavens, on God, on babies that died inside of us. I always told you, Baby, you're the best idea God ever had. You ******' did it. Tie me up, baby. If I can't drive anymore, drive me out of here. Tie me up to the god-**** tracks and cover my naked body with those whaddya call ems? Tuck me into your blanket statements so big I get them confused with the entire god-**** sky.

I made notes of docking posts
pointing out to murky reflections
of tourists that didn’t have time
for a souvenir mug or a picture
with a black trumpeter content with his brass,
and nothing else, blowing life into the seagull
sky, making the clouds pop and drop spray-
mist jazz, which accompanied his trumpet
with a gentle washboard scrape.
He beat his heel to the thousand pin-drops
of passerby earrings, crab sweatpant draw-
strings, and trawl nets dissolving into the sea.
Baltimore filled the margins
of a travel notebook alongside
pencil sketches of the Aquarium,
Prufrockian split claws
wrapped in algae bandages,
that homeless man weakly thumbing
through a pocket bible, the 32
cents wearing sea salt jackets,
and my cold girlfriend pulling on patron
sweaters in an art museum closet.
But it’s all a gimmick.
It’s $22 crab cakes
and paint-splatter-printed
sweatshirts that say New York
or D.C. or Everything on a Disposable
Kodak Camera.

Tired of the idea, I threw the page
over the edge, hoping to drown
it in green, but I never heard it hit
the water. I braced myself on a life
ring rack, leaned over,
and watched it settle into a natural
barge of dead leaves and orange peels
while sea foam circled
it like a bed skirt that’s only
noticed for the few seconds spent stripping
down before going to sleep
just to wake up to rain on the Royal Sonesta,
kids racing down the hall, the obligatory
alarm clock,
and the black trumpeter’s groove
four floors down.

I think
your back still arcs
like a feather.

But I still called you *****
from time to time.

When you put your eyeliner
on, I thought of different dreary places
where darkness could reside
peacefully.

Dream catchers litter too many of the beds
we have occupied.

When I hear about your new best friend,
I want him to know that you
know how to pull teeth out with your tongue.

The creamy bowl of the clouds
laundered the sky, pulling pollution
against the washboard of our love;
and your legs were always open underneath the table,
waiting for my fingers
jaundiced by nicotine.

Sometimes u didn't know if
no
was the right word.

No
was the right word.
it would have retained
both of our
sanity's
even in vanity.

It seems that
no
is the better kind of stain
than
yes
and all of its incumbent pain.

No
would have been better
than twenty-five feet of intestines
being tugged constantly..

Better then
the peeping heart
and
broken warbles.

Better than matinees.

Better than
runways
and
leaving landing gear
on my heart.

Better than
love itself.

It's a washboard of broken dreams,
A smile of stars,
Road signs that have never tried to speak,
Can this moonlight engulf us?
Roads tear up what wasn't empty land,
Love is a growing tree, with knots,
And our feet bleed from walking,
Like her heart from all his talking,
Butterflies with extra wings,
With a painful reality, why do the birds sleep while we lie awake?
The stars don't tell much,
But that look on your face,
It sure does.

i just wanted to dance
so close to the stage
that the dj could spit
right in my ******* eye
shaking it
so loose and hard
that people would talk about
that guy at the show
i wanted to make friends
that would remember my name
when i bumped into them
broad daylight
middle of 6th
"ALLEN!!!"
i wanted my girlfriends hands
around my hips
kissing my neck
and screaming
WOOOOOOOOOO

but really

i would have settled
i would have settled for
something quiet
i could cross my legs
sip a coffee
puff a cigarette
and listen intently to
some jangley classical guitarist
or a professional washboard player
or anything other than what i had to hear
it wasnt music

instead
instead of any of it
i trod the streets
behind my party
alone more or less
feet bleeding in search
of the elusive "show"
i never danced
i stood or sat
slumped
wondering where she was
skin crawling for a kiss

thanks for dropping me off mom

yeah
i
remembered
back in the day
when
we
could not afford
a
washer and dryer machine
so
mama
washed our clothes
the
old fashion way
mama scrubbed
by
hand
on a washboard
then
she
separated the clothes
to
put
the
clean clothes
out
on
the clothesline
with
wooden clothes pins
to
air dry
in
the fresh sunlight
anyway
mama
would never mix
the
white clothes
with
them
colored clothes
singing about
Jesus saving the world

the ultimate life hack
is when you realize that
life is happening right now.
it's not happening in the future-
i mean, it's not happening tomorrow
anymore than it ever happened in the past.
it's actually just happening right now
and no matter how many times somebody says it
or how many times oprah prints it in her books
or how many times ferris bueller repeats it on TBS reruns,
life moves fast and you've gotta slow down and just live it.

once you do this one time, you're addicted to it.
you find the simple task of folding the laundry
has some hidden mystery buried in it.
picking the lint from the lint catcher.
typing the keys on the keyboard-
there's some hidden mystery in every moment.
and these are things that you know you should be doing.
that's almost the worst part:
the mystery is hidden in the simple, routine, mechanized things.
the more we let machines do those things for us
the less we work with our hands,
the more emotional and intellectual stress we feel,
the less we have a mundane, mindless task to work that stress out.
don't sit there and tell me it's not theraputic
to rub clothes against a washboard for a while.
it's rhythmic. it's tribal. it's instinct. it's therapy.

we spend so much of our lives
working as hard as can to get away from these things,
and ironically they are what we need the most:
to be able to turn off the brain and just
scrub a dish for a half an hour
it's ******* mesmerizing,
an endorphin release.

but, sadly, if you're anything like me
you skip through these moments
and trade them in for 10 more mins in front of the TV.
Or worse yet, you actually have nothing to do
so you just worry and fret about dumb ****
until you've actually created a real problem.
don't be like the ghost-of-you's-passed.
make a list of real problems you've got right now,
and when you skip washing the dish
because you're opting for the washing machine,
take that 5 or 10 minutes and
work on solving one of them son *******.

Get-r-done.

Banjos clang out a rhythm and someone hoots on a whiskey jug. A washboard rattles and feet stomp on old boards. A fiddle winds up and echos down the hollow, corn simmers in a *** and biscuits are hot out of the stove. A harmonica whines like a train down empty tracks and a juice harp twangs. People dance and laugh as children run around. The sound of the Ozarks or the Blue Ridge cannot be mistaken for anything else. People of good spirits and a hard working nature come together you see. They celebrate life and caring for each other at a Bluegrass Jamboree.

I have a slight fear, in relating these vignettes, that musically we're too basic. I doubt anyone could say we don’t know new music, after all, we listen to WYBCx, which plays unusual tracks but we just share this silly place that fits us. So go ahead, judge us. No, I mean it’s fine, so fine.

In my suite we liaison with Cinderella Sundays, once a month, where we ALL clean our suite. We put on rediscovered disco classics - like Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive,” Dana Summer’s “On the Radio,” and the Bee Gees “How deep is your love,” bumping these songs as we sano things. As part of this effort, we usually order some wings.

When we get deliveries we have to pick them up at the front gate. I was wearing this short, cropped shirt, shorts and no bra and as I headed for the door, Leong said, “No! You can go outside like THAT! So I grabbed a cover shirt and absentmindedly put my Airpods in one of the pockets. I always do my laundry on Sunday - ALWAYS - if I don’t it’s because of something tragic like nuclear war.

That’s how I destroyed my second set of Airpods in less than a month. They drowned in the wash. I’ll miss them. They were dear to me and served me well. We buried them in a flower *** as part of a martini fueled funeral service. I decided to name my new ones “Miley” because I’ve been listening to her “Jolene” backyard session endlessly.

My suitemates and I decided to do this friendship exercise where we exchange playlists of songs that remind us of that person. All 8 of us chose a song that reminded us of Lisa, for instance, and she got that playlist.

The song Lisa picked for me was “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton. I couldn’t discern why, so I asked her. She explained: We all go to this local NailPro to get our nails done (although It’s not the greatest place and there’s always a wait - it services) and I like Acrylic nails. She says that when I’m reading, with my headphones on, I unconsciously rub my nails together, making a little washboard sound with my nails similar to what Dolly used at the start of the song.

The song I picked for Lisa was “Way too ****” by Drake - that future and young ****. She had it on a loop last fall. If we were studying or deep talking Lisa would say, “You know what would make this moment better?” And, she’d call it up. That song is pure Lisa.

Anna plays guitar and sings sometimes (she’s really good) and one song I particularly liked her version of - which I didn’t know the name of for the longest time - I’d say, “play the night song,” is “Because the Night” by Pati Smith. So I gave her that.

Sophy got Zendaya’s “Dynamite,” because she IS and Leong got “Year of love” by Jenny Hval - because, well, that’s what it’s been for us.

One lowkey pastime of our little group was re-watching “The crown” and we were ignited by a scene where Lady Di is roller skating to a song called “Girls on Film” by Duran Duran. If you spend much time in our suite you’ll hear that song and how everyone dances it out.

Peace y'all.